6 Years Old, China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 Crashes In Mountains While Flying From Kunming To Guangzhou

Ilustrasi armada Boeing 737-800 China Eastern Airlines. (Wikimedia Commons/Aero Icarus)

JAKARTA - A China Eastern Airlines plane, carrying 132 passengers and crew, crashed in the mountains of southern China on Monday while en route from Kunming City to Guangzhou, China.

The jet involved in the crash was a Boeing 737 and the number of victims was not immediately known, broadcaster CCTV said. Rescue services were on their way to the scene, he said. There is no word on the cause of the accident. Meanwhile, Flightradar 24 The plane is a 6 year old 737-800.

"Can confirm that the plane crashed," China Eastern Airlines said in a statement that also provided details of a hotline for relatives of passengers and crew on board.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and the airline said the plane was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew on board at the time of the crash and lost contact over Wuzhou City.

CAAC said an emergency team had been dispatched to the crash site. Media quoted a rescue official as saying the plane was completely destroyed. The fire sparked by the accident destroyed bamboo and trees before being extinguished, media reported.

The plan is for the flight to depart from the southwestern city of Kunming at 13:11 local time, FlightRadar24 data shows, to land in Guangzhou, on the south coast, at 15:05 p.m. local time.

The plane was hurtling at 29.100 feet at 0620 GMT, according to FlightRadar24 data. Just over two minutes and 15 seconds later, the next available data showed that it had dropped to 9.075 feet. In another 20 seconds, the last tracked altitude was 3.225 feet.

The China Eastern Airlines website was later displayed in black and white, which the airline did in response to the crash as a sign of respect for the victims. The Boeing China website has also switched to black and white.

To note, aviation data provider OAG said this month, state-owned China Eastern Airlines was the sixth-largest in the world, based on scheduled weekly seat capacity and the largest in China.

In addition, China's aviation industry's safety record is among the best in the world over the past decade. According to the Aviation Safety Network, China's last fatal jet crash occurred in 2010, when 44 of the 96 people on board died when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed while approaching Yichun airport in low visibility.

And the 737-800 model that crashed on Monday has a good safety record and is a precursor to the 737 MAX model that has been grounded in China for more than three years, following the fatal crashes in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia.